Christine Phillips's Blog

Grades Moderation

Blog Posted:6/27/2013 4:57:00 AM

Dear Soupers:Please help me to clarify the statement below.Thank you always for your valuablecomments.

Should class room instructors at all level have autonomy in the classroom or should students’ grades be moderated by other individuals after a grade has been assigned to each student? Please bear in mind that these moderators have not taught students and some of them are not educators. Please give reasons if your answer is yes or no.

If the students have been educated in the haphazard, contradictory and generally confusing way you have answered my questions, it is easy to see why the moderators act in the way they do. My answer is no, teachers should not have this total autonomy in the classroom. many teachers give better grades than they should, mainly to make themselves look better. There are lots of excellent teachers but the system is letting them down. To me the standard of education has been going downhill for years. The moderators merely sort the wheat from the chaff and that is not the fault of the students.

Hi, I remember what happened in a Statistics class, 90 percent of students got Ds, later all the results were scrapped. I inquired about it and the moderator said that in a class situation test results have to reflect a normal curve, ie, have a few students above average, most students average and a few below average. That’s the reason the passing grade is raised if many students do well and lowered when they don’t.

Richard you are getting too personal here. Please discuss the issue from a general point of view. Do not pin me to students...because it is not related to my students...it is related to an entire university method of evaluation. To answer your question, they do not see the work done by students but evaluate them from the exam results. I hope that this is enough.

Hi Richard. No. The moderators are in an head office in another place and they never visit the class, observe or have any connection or association with students. This is at the university level; not at the primary level.

Christine, Going back to comment on your comment on my first entry---My only concern would be that I think there might be too many students going through schools today just to move them on so they are someone elses problem or that the system in general has given up on them instead of making sure they have learned before shoving them into the world unprepared---whole different question. There should be some standardized test that have to be passed to prove that point.

continued from below--and the part missing is very important, intonation, expressions, and other affectations, but perhaps more important is the true conversation that is also missed today with texting or emailing. Who knows, without having been there from day to day what was asked specifically, what was answered, what growth took place that can't be measured by a test. Isn't it shameful enough that we are becoming so impersonal in other ways to know consider the valuations of our true mentors invalidated by those who weren't even there! Enough said, but when I was in college 40 years ago it was already starting with professors who left their grading and else to those who weren't even there.

Hi Christine back again. Though I have never taught school (primary or secondary) I was certified in military MOI (methods of instruction) and taught multiple courses on MOI. How to properly instruct in any subject does not alter the fundamentals of instruction but your question reaches beyond that. Also, there is some ambiguity here because, in my opinion, you can't be an educator without having taught students, though some pointy heads might try to make that claim, but whether they are or not should not factor into this. I forget what movie it was but it reached out to me when you asked this question. When someone is translating a language there is a major part missing--continued.

Instructors should have autonomy, without reservation! If an instructor cannot grade without discrimination for multiple factors the instructor should be fired. There is way too much involved otherwise especially if the moderators have only test results to peruse----later--gotta go. Will return--you always have thought provoking blogs.

Hi Craig thank you for your comments.What if discrimination is not involved, and the moderator changed the entire class grade from a moderate score to lower score with the intention to fail the entire class?